Full of pace with iconic visuals. A new and unique take on the overcrowded first person shooter genre.
The Good:
-Iconic visuals
-Incredible use of colour
-Fantastic music when being tranquil or full of pace
-Great controls
-A new pioneering vision of the plat forming genre
-The closest you can get to playing Trinity and Neo in the original Matrix film being chased down by Agents in gaming
-Being able to complete the game without so much as firing a gun or killing a single enemy is a refreshing experience
-Exciting environments to navigate despite being a linear title
-Stunning challenge map downloadable content
-Full of additional content
The Bad:
-Story isn't exactly captivating but 'average'
-Some of the plot threads go unresolved and mentions a lot of characters we never meet
-On the rare occasion your character completely refuses to grab surfaces that are easily reachable
-Sometimes object lines can look pixelated
-The single player is quite short when speed running
-No online multiplayer
-Constantly restarting time trials and speed runs in the pursuit of perfection can get tedious
When EA announced less emphasis on half hearted movie tie ins and licences on every last platform imaginable and to concentrate on new IP's not many (including myself) believed them at the time simply due to their track record. 2008 turned out to be an absolutely Stella year for the publisher. Dead Space is quite rightly so held in high regards in the industry, Burnout Paradise was incredible and the vast improvements in the EA Sports division really cemented their promise.
The Christmas rush of 2008 was as rewarding as it was ridiculous for us gamers but it was the release window for another of Electronic Arts new titles; Mirror's Edge from the team behind the highly successful Battlefield series.
It was a completely new direction for the studio with a new un proven title with a certainly not so text book approach to the person perspective in a cut throat market. Sounds as though it had chance possible at its disposal.
Sadly the sales weren't that great but they certainly were nothing for EA to be ashamed of, not by a long shot and received almost entirely positive ratings from the journalists. Sales figures are no indication as to how good a video game is, bad ones can sell by the boat load and vice versa.
Immediately apparent before anything else in the game is the graphics, I can not recall many being this identifiable, vibrant or this iconic on any platform ever, let alone this generation.
It does have a very anime style theme to it. Very bold and vibrant with an emphasis on bold colours.
This isn't the mix of grey and brown in the pursuit of gritty realism and the textures aren't that incredibly detailed opting for a more flat, one piece look but that isn't down to laziness at all, it is an artistic choice as a lot of emphasis has gone into how light plays with the surface and the subtle imperfections on them.
The beautiful shades of red, blue, green, yellow, orange and even the black and the white looks sublime and the constant palette changes and the way the game keeps mixing one colour with another looks genuinely refreshing and incredible the entirety of the game.
If there is one gripe with the graphics that can be found is that object lines to look chunky and pixelated at times. Think of using the bar to draw a straight line in Microsoft paint and you get a rough impression of what I am talking about.
The game is set in a city where information control and surveillance got ushered in violently and the game heroine Faith was a child during the protests to which she lost a mother in the riots which ultimately lead to Faith leaving her Father as she blamed him for her mothers death.
Trained as a so called 'runner' they exist between the gloss or reality, the mirror's edge. Runners exist as sort of a glorified courier and spend their days traversing roof tops to deliver packages for clients who didn't want their parcels to go through the information control channels.
The game opens up to a tutorial, apparently we have just recovered from a broken leg and are a bit out of practice. I'm not going to go into too much detail at this point but it is as good of a tutorial as you can expect from a game by its ability to ease you into the basics and quickly train you up in a short period of time. That is where the ultimate magic is found in this game, it isn't so much a test of skill or luck against terrible AI at times but that of timing.
The opening level has us delivering an unknown package for an unknown client and start getting pursued along the roof tops by city police. We think nothing of it at the time but Faith is pretty alarmed by how full on their pursuit was as to normal.
When we are back to the safety of our lair listening to police airwaves we hear our sister Kate (who we haven't seen for some years) on her way to a call by a Mayoral candidate Robert Pope, a man who had a close relationship to our parents at the times of the protests.
We arrive and he has been murdered, Kate states her case that it isn't as it seemed and the police turn up to pursue us.
Mirror's Edge takes us on a journey to free our sibling from Jail and a life sentence for murder and uncover the conspiracy surrounding it all. It's nothing new or exciting or anything that hasn't been done a thousand times in games and particularly films. I would simply describe it as 'adequate'.
The story is not just only pretty weak but there is a lot of unresolved story threads and references to a lot of characters we never meet or even see their faces in the game. Ever.
Story telling between levels is presented by a 2d anime like cartoon, it all looks fantastically sharp and colourful but it is a rather odd choice considering how unique and identifiable the graphics in this title are. It helps deliver greater impact upon starting the next level I guess.
Story telling in level keeps us locked in the first person. What really is good here is that rather than just standing still watching everything occur like in Call of Duty & such you not only hear your character talk to them but you can see the acting in the hand animations and even see them shifting their body weight.
This game is actually a plat forming adventure in disguise. It is very similar to the revolution Assassin's Creed to the genre by offering a range of options to traverse the open world environment. Mirror's is a linear title but does offer a wide range of varieties for the player to get through the level.
Playing this game is always done from the first person perspective. We have a variety of basic melee combat, by which I mean you have one combination but can mix a sliding kick in with a flying kick and even the ability to perform a Mario jumping stomp to simply disarming your opponent. The combat does sound pretty shallow and I suppose I can not really fight a case, the only saving grace is that this title isn't concentrated on combat and is only there as a last means of survival.
You can in fact play this entire game to completion without ever firing a single gun shot or killing an enemy.
The main focus of this game is momentum. Maintaining as much pace as possible to get through the level in one piece. It's not a required mechanic by any stretch of the imagination but when you are moving at great speeds leaping across roof tops it looks so exhilarating and you feel as though the game is promoting you to do, rather than dictating that you do.
Your vision becoming slightly blurred and the focus of the camera getting a bit more obscure to seeing and hearing the wind whoosh past you as you charge through it amidst bullets from hostiles showering around your feet just inches away, it is glorious.
The movement is a remarkable achievement it combines Modern Warfare's flawlessly smooth controls with Killzone's clunkiness and in the deep feel as you must jump, slide, vault, swing, climb and slide your way through levels.
This is the closest you are ever likely to get to the original Matrix movie re-enacting Trinity getting chased by Agents through hallways, barging your way through locked doors and scrambling across building roofs whilst being guided through your ear piece by an Operator like friend giving your directions and warnings along with updates.
Runner Vision is a genius inclusion to the games core mechanics. Runner Vision highlights objects deep red that are used such cardboard boxes for spring boarding and pipes for climbing up. The look they give the game world compliments the graphics perfectly and once used they return to their natural colour. The vision also highlights an enemies gun red just before they melee you, if you can hit the counter button at this time you will perform a disarm, if not… well you get slapped.
If timing isn't necessarily your strong point there is a slow motion feature that slows things down giving you a much greater time to react.
You do, in my personal opinion, spend just a little bit too much time stood in elevators and traversing air conditioning vents.
Before this game was released there was some sceptics that where saying this game should have been from the third person perspective. I could never really argue before playing the title for the first time but DICE's decision have it this way is by far the best option. It not only gives it more of a unique feel but everything feels so much more intimate, precise and personal and the way you get a very slight sense of claustrophobia and the way the focus switches between blurred objects and backgrounds looks stunning.
There is something that worries me with this game, being a DICE fan I've come to expect 'holes' in the engine and programming leaving the game highly susceptible to glitches and crashes and there is no sign of it here at all.
The music here (as with most modern games now I suppose) is first class. Not your big score soundtrack but an electro one. You have a sort of ambience of tranquil electric noises just playing away through your travelling, admiring the landscape and working out routes but when you are in combat or being chased down it goes for a high octane break beat score to inject pace that this title is already so incredibly rich with. Let us not forget just how good the main them 'I'm Still Alive' with it's piano background sounds.
When the game and what feels like a half hearted attempted at leaving an opening for a sequel is finished there is hidden packages in the game to locate to unlock bonus content such as concept art and music then the game really starts with level speed runs and time trials to assault the leader boards.
If you do dive into the world of time trials and speed runs you my friend have had it. From this is point on you will waste hours of your life chasing for perfection to increase your star rating upon lowering times. If you hit a talent stone wall and can't reduce your time download one of the ghost replays from the leader boards and chase their spirit through the level to discover new quicker routes.
The inclusion of a replay mode here could have been something very special.
Apart from the lack of inclusion of death match modes (which wouldn't fit the game anyway) I can never help but feel what racing other players live and a capture the flag mode could have been like.
As is the norm now in all gaming we have to pay for additional content that always feels so half hearted with the bulk offender being map packs. This is the same case here but they are so unique and beautiful they are well worth purchasing.
They aren't new city landscapes where you have to carve out the quickest route possible in the trials but something so completely simple it is genius. They are an array of brightly coloured shapes that is sort of like a surrealist painters conception of a future assault course suspended miles above a pacific ocean and take the traversal skills you have already learnt to an entirely new level.
The Battlefield series is a franchise that has always been very close to my heart but DICE being dedicated to making it as good as it can be on the PC and is now starting a to do a very respectable job presenting it on consoles can't of really fulfilled all their creativity.
EA has given them a chance to try something new and boy have they taken it. All the years they have been locked away concentrating on the dull and gritty weaponry and landscapes they have let all of their pent up creativity run wild and never let what the competition is doing and what the market is buying let them stray from their original concept at all.
Mirror's Edge is as pioneering as it is iconic and unique, as a result it is one of the biggest sleeper hits this generation. I would defiantly recommend this game to people who weren't that high in my regards.
Gordon Brown, you won't be reading this because I'm not talking about fox hunting or kilts but if you are, I highly recommend you buy Mirror's Edge.